The Mind Creative
It would have been no laughing matter had the over-sensitive US
Department of Homeland Security been alerted to the fact that,
in the driver’s seat of this American car with a New York number
plate, was a Pakistani man with an Australian passport.
About two hours’ drive south of Denver, near Colorado Springs, is
the Garden of the Gods, so called because of the unusual and
steep rock formations, ancient sedimentary beds of red, blue and
purple, now tilted vertically. It is a very unusual sight and popular
with hikers and rock climbers.
On a previous trip, we had driven through Colorado’s Rocky
Mountain National Park, northwest of Denver. It has majestic
mountain views, from wooded forests to mountain Tundra , as
well as a variety of wildlife.
Encompassing over a thousand square kilometers, the park may
be accessed by US Highway 34, which reaches an elevation of
3,713 meters. The park includes over five hundred kilometers of
trails, 150 lakes, and 720 km of streams.
There are over 60 peaks higher than 3,700 meters, and over a
quarter of the park is above the tree line. The Rockies is a
formidable mountain range, 4,830 kilometers in length, from
northern British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in southern
US.
Long Peak rises to 4,346 metres, just a few metres shy of the
highest peak in the American Rockies, Mt Elbert (4401 m). Mt
Whitney (4421 m) in the Sierra Nevada (California) is the highest
in the contiguous US, only a few meters higher than Mt Elbert,
but significantly shorter than the highest peak in the US and North
America. That distinction goes to Mt McKinley in Alaska (6194 m).
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